


Personalized Care

by reasonablywittyatbest



Series: The Lost Statements [4]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, The Corruption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 14:32:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19378636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reasonablywittyatbest/pseuds/reasonablywittyatbest
Summary: Statement of unknown persons, likely circa 1955. Audio by Jonathan Simms, the Archivist.Statement Begins.





	Personalized Care

Statement of unknown persons, likely circa 1955. Audio by Jonathan Simms, the Archivist.

Statement Begins.

I write this as my last confession. I believe this may be my last chance to do so. I have gone wrong somewhere. Not in my life choices, but my mind. Something has gone wrong with my mind. 

Perhaps it was seeing my mother die at such a young age in such a gruesome way. I remember so clearly the smell of rot on her breath as she wasted away, decaying from the inside. The open sores on her back from lying in bed for so long. Of course we couldn’t afford to get her any real help, she made do with me and the occasional visitor from our church. 

I would crawl into bed and cuddle with her through the night to try and comfort her through her suffering until one morning she didn’t wake up. I didn’t tell anyone for days, I refused to admit she was gone. I had no one if she was gone. And all the while her body began to break down and rot, truly rot, and I would still crawl into bed with her, it didn’t bother me, I loved her after all. 

I was finally found out and shipped off to live with some distant relatives. Yet, I feel like her dying stench never really faded from my skin, like it was a part of me as well after she passed. I still often wonder if those around me can smell the rot on me. 

Maybe that’s when I went wrong. I know that’s when I decided I wanted to be a nurse, to help those like my mother. I was going to be a nurse and help those who could not afford anything else. What good fortune I had with the founding of the NHS. I studied hard, and worked hard, and working for the NHS as a nurse has many perks. My living quarters are paid for, and I am surrounded by my sisters. Despite feeling like I am a monster hiding in their midst I do enjoy their company.

So many of the girls I studied with struggled when it came to wound care in particular. There were those individuals, farm bred and tough as nails, who did not mind it so much, but there were others who turned white or green the first time they saw a festering wound. Not me though, I wasn’t even just strong in the face of the decay. The smell of it brought back memories of my mother, it was almost comforting. Ah, the swollen red flesh surrounding rivers of yellow cutting through black dead mounds. The colors were almost like a sunset, a painting, converting the boring flesh into something fascinating. I wish I could say I was disturbed by my reaction, but I wasn’t. I accepted this part of myself with nearly alarming ease. It has always been a part of me. 

Obviously my favorite part of the job was always tending to those with open wounds. Cleaning and bandaging those who are healing from surgery, or who came in with severe wounds. Or visiting the homes of those who have recently left the hospital, and helping them as they healed; or didn’t heal, as was often the case.

One night a patient came in; a homeless man, too proud to come in until it was too late to save him. Large abscesses and lumps covered his body and we did our best to nurse him through his final moments but he was dead before sunrise. I know the doctor caught me staring at him for too long, saw me lovingly caress his face. He was so beautiful in that moment though, I couldn’t help it.

I was tasked with disposing of the bandages. I didn’t. I took the bandages that had been used on the dying man, and I used them on another, masking them with clean bandages. Soon he was dying too. I nursed him as his flesh began to rot and fester, spreading from his original wound like a flower blossoming against his deathly pale skin. He looked at me with such gratitude when I tended to him. Surely that was an agreeable arrangement for us both, until he finally died. 

He wasn’t the first one. Well, I suppose the first one I took such an active hand in. Before him, I had simply gone through the stages of cleaning and tending to wounds while admiring their progress until the patient was no longer savable. I don’t know how I know who to choose, but I think maybe, they had already been marked with the smell of rot, just like me. I think the Matron has started to notice how many of my patients die, but I don’t care anymore. I won’t need her much longer.

I have been tending to an elderly woman in her home for some time now. I brought with me whatever I could from the hospital that I thought would do the trick now a dozen sicknesses ravage her body and there is no one to catch me when I visit her. No family or friends. Less and less of her is flesh and more and more of her is open rotting sores. I have crawled into bed with her and cradled her like I did my dying mother. Now it is my body that rots. I can see the spots starting to form and grow on my flesh, soon they will spread until less and less of me is flesh and more of me is rot. Sweet smelling sickness growing and forming and living in me. The embrace of the rot will be so sweet. 

Because, I do not think I am dying, not like those I have cared for. These are part of me, the smell, the puss, the ache. It is all mine and mine to give. 

Statement Ends.

These appear to be…. pages from someone’s diary, perhaps? No name, no date, no statement number.I assume it was written sometime in the 1950s, shortly after the founding of the NHS. There are no indications of how the institute came to possess them. No indication if there is still a woman covered in infectious sores stumbling around London. Though with my luck I feel it is safe to just assume there is and I will someday have the pleasure of meeting her. 

The pages are badly stained with…something, but each page is sealed in plastic. Which made it rather difficult to read them but I must admit I am grateful. I do not like to think what would happen to me if I came into contact with whatever it is. 

There have been other statements like this, ones that seem to have come to the institute in some other manner than being given as a statement. Perhaps in the days before tape recorders statements would just randomly appear in the institute. Maybe they still do.


End file.
